


the fearful thing

by Heronfem



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Established Relationship, Love, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25200628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heronfem/pseuds/Heronfem
Summary: ‘Tis a fearful thingto love what death can touch.A fearful thingto love, to hope, to dream, to be –to be,And oh, to lose.Lambert and Aiden face their own mortality and Aiden’s steadily growing mental deterioration with love (and no small amount of violence).
Relationships: Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher)
Comments: 29
Kudos: 136
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #004





	the fearful thing

**Author's Note:**

> ‘Tis a fearful thing  
> to love what death can touch.
> 
> A fearful thing  
> to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
> 
> to be,  
> And oh, to lose.
> 
> A thing for fools, this,
> 
> And a holy thing,
> 
> a holy thing  
> to love.
> 
> For your life has lived in me,  
> your laugh once lifted me,  
> your word was gift to me.
> 
> To remember this brings painful joy.
> 
> ‘Tis a human thing, love,  
> a holy thing, to love  
> what death has touched.” - _Judah Halevi_

Everyone has their breaking point. 

Lambert learned this early in life. He was born to a cold man and a fragile woman, and she shattered like a teacup in time. Lambert couldn’t really blame her. The world is an ugly place, and it only gets uglier as time goes on. 

He is broken, irrevocably shattered from the 6 year old child screaming in Vesemir’s arms for his dead eyed mother. He was thrown against the stone wall of expectation and battered himself into pieces, until he was picked up, reforged, made into something new and monstrous. And then he’s broken again, and again, and again. 

Lambert knows about breaking points. He tries, now that he’s an adult of some consequence, to have as few as possible. 

But they can’t all be avoided. 

Aiden can’t be avoided. 

They don’t make active plans to meet, but it happens anyway. It always does. Helps that they have a little safe house to go to, right on the edge of Tretogor, in a quiet neighborhood that doesn’t say a word about two Witchers growing a garden and hauling in monsters at all hours of the night. Part of that is because Aiden is a sweet, charming thing when he wants to be, but the bigger part of it is that their neighborhood has never been safer. They’re not always there at the same time but they meet up often enough, because maybe the safe house is more of a safe home, and they're both fond of creature comforts like real beds.

Lambert arrives at 225 Crookleg Lane late in the spring. Aiden’s horse, a high stepping little mare with big eyes and propensity towards violence, is in her stall in their stable so he gets his horse situated before heading into the house. It’s a nice place, two stories high and made of stone, with a kitchen and living area on the main floor and two bedrooms in the upper level. It’s filled with the small detritus of lives, and when Lambert walks in the back door he finds everything as clean as can be. 

That’s the first sign. 

Aiden is a creature of habit, but he is a Cat, and he tends to leave his things strewn around during the day before frantically cleaning in the evening. Day cleaning means stress, even without the leftover smell of him fussing around. It’s too early in the day for his scent to be lingering on everything.

“Aiden?” Lambert calls. The kitchen is spotless, their little round table scrubbed smooth. “You in?” 

There’s a faint noise from the upper floor, so Lambert shuts the door and makes his way up the stairs, hand on his dagger hilt just in case. 

Aiden’s in their bedroom. It’s a small room, mostly just an overstuffed canopy bed and endless piles of pillows and blankets to help ease Aiden’s damaged and aching joints between jobs with a pair of tables for their things to sit on to either side. Aiden’s sitting on the side of the bed, a paper held tight in his hands. A letter, it looks like, with an official seal attached. His face is bloodless, eyes hunted, and when he looks up at Lambert there is desperate, aching misery in them. 

Lambert stops in the doorway, a tendril of dread curling around his heart. 

“Welcome home,” Aiden says, quiet. He’s down to shirt sleeves and breeches, his feet bare on their smooth wooden floor. “Missed you.” 

“Missed you too,” Lambert says slowly, looking him over. “What’s wrong?” 

Aiden slowly closes his eyes, and Lambert’s too slow heart starts to pound with a fear he hadn’t known it was possible for him to still feel. 

“I hoped,” Aiden says, so soft it’s barely audible, “that I’d been careful enough. I haven’t been. Someone found where we live, and I got this on the stoop this morning. I’m being blackmailed.” 

He opens his eyes again and passes over the paper. Lambert takes it, heart in his throat, and sits down next to him to read.

It’s a short letter, shoddily written, and the paper is cheap. The demands are pretty simple. The writer wants Aiden to murder an entire household of nobility, including the servants, for some slight they did against him. The information offered against Aiden’s dismissal of the threat is that they’ll arrange for it to be open season on Wolf Witcher pelts, starting with Lambert, if Aiden doesn’t comply by the end of the week. They’ll also inform certain other nobility whose relatives Aiden dispatched a lifetime ago who they can place the blame of murder on. It’s questionable how much of this they can actually do, but the threat is clear. 

“We can run,” he says, and Aiden barks out a laugh, running a hand through his hair as he stands up, pacing in the little space beside the bed. 

“Run? Sweetheart, listen to yourself,” Aiden says, and the first hint of wildness makes Lambert pause. The earlier dread coalesces into a thorn in his heart. “They’ll have told people. I either kill the household or I kill the blackmailer, and that’s it. That’s the choice we’ve got, because otherwise this is going to follow me forever. _Fuck!_ ” He drags his hands through his hair, yanking at it.

Lambert carefully stands up, because he’s pretty sure he knows where this is going. 

“What do you want to do?” he asks. 

“How the fuck should I know?” Aiden snarls, wheeling on him. “They want to _kill you_ , I can’t just let that stand, and I won’t kill a whole household-” 

It happens fast. 

Lambert knows that it’s coming, so at least this time he’s braced for a sudden armful of furious Cat Witcher making for the door. He catches him before Aiden can grab the handle, pinning his arms to his sides. “Oh no you don’t,” he grunts, and Aiden twists like an eel in his arms, howling and spitting his fury as his nails, always cut into points, find the gaps in his armor and plunge in to score bloody marks down his sides and rip his shirt. 

Fuck, he goes through so many shirts with this asshole around. 

It’s worth it though. 

“Come on,” Lambert breathes, wincing as Aiden’s too-sharp nails raise more blood. “Come on, Aiden, come back to me. I know you can, you’ve done it a million times now. I’ve got you. We’ll fix this.” 

Aiden’s teeth dig into his neck, and Lambert just grits his teeth and bears it as he feels the inhuman sharp incisors break the skin and draw blood up. Cat Witcher teeth are deadly when they want. Aiden could rip his throat out and he’d let him, and it sends a thrill of horror and love through him all at once. Lambert reaches up to cradle the back of his head as he breathes through the pain, Aiden snarling against his skin and smearing the blood everywhere. He makes mindless soothing noises, gently rocking them in place as he keeps Aiden pinned against him, dealing with the sting of Witcher healing closing up the wounds. 

Aiden bites him again with a snarl, and Lambert lets out a hiss of pain as the teeth tear the skin. This shirt is definitely going to be ruined, he’s going to bleed all over it. 

“Come on,” he says, and finally gives in and wraps a strong hand around the back of Aiden’s neck to squeeze hard. Aiden rears back, bloody mouth flashing, and Lambert barely manages to dodge a headbutt that lands on his now very sore shoulder instead. He snarls, shoving down his temper as hard as he can to fist his hand in Aiden’s hair and keep him from trying that particular trick again. “Knock it off!” 

Aiden hisses at him, teeth bared and eyes blown wide in complete lack of awareness. Lambert yanks at his hair again, and Aiden blinks, sudden and sharp. His pupils narrow back to their normal slits, and he stares in blank horror at Lambert’s neck before shoving away from him. Lambert lets him go, wincing as some of Aiden’s hair pulls out around his fingers, but Aiden just scrambles back into a corner and curls in on himself, starting to hyperventilate.

Aiden sobs, heaving, and Lambert carefully kneels down next to him. Aiden flails at him with a bloody hand, shrinking against the wall. 

“Don’t fucking _touch_ me, don’t touch me, get away, I’m fucking disgusting-” 

Lambert gathers him up and holds him tight, not letting go even as Aiden fights him. They’ve done this song and dance routine so many times now, even talked about their fucking feelings about it. Aiden loves him, and hates himself, and hates how he wants Lambert’s love when he’s feeling so terrible. He wants to be held even when he’s screaming against it, has given his permission for Lambert to do as he feels is right. So Lambert pins him down and holds him until he’s sobbing and the fight goes out of him, leaving him curled on the floor in Lambert’s arms and all cried out.

“Come on,” Lambert says, heart aching. “Come on, asshole, let’s get your mouth and hands cleaned up.” 

Aiden nods, obedient in his exhaustion, and Lambert heaves him up to carry him down the stairs to their sink and pump to clean his face. Aiden goes quietly, and Lambert helps him wash up before his shaking legs give out and he has to catch him before he hits the floor. 

After that, he has to physically pick Aiden up and carry him in his arms back up to their bed, where he installs his partner among the nest of pillows to try and recover a little while he strips down to clean and bandage his bites and climbs into bed. Aiden rolls over to him, shoving his face into Lambert’s chest and wrapping around him like he’s afraid Lambert will vanish if not held, and Lambert rubs a soothing hand over Aiden’s back as he stares at the top of their canopy. 

It’s happening more and more. 

They’d always known it was a risk. Aiden’s more resilient than most of his brothers against the mutagens ravaging his mind, but Cats die younger than most for a reason. 

His arms tighten around Aiden. 

That’s a problem for the future. Right now, Aiden needs him to be the strong one. He can’t break on him now. He has to keep it together, because they’ve got blackmailers to deal with and probably a house to burn down. It’s a pity, he’s really rather liked this house. Maybe they could sell it instead. There’s a young girl up the road with a boy who’d been courting her seriously, maybe they’d like to stay close enough to the parents for company but far enough to actually get laid once in a while. 

“I love you,” he says into the quiet, and Aiden makes a small, broken noise. 

“You shouldn’t,” Aiden says, fingers coming up to gently touch the bandage covering his bites. His fingers are shaking a little. 

“Too bad,” Lambert says easily. “I love you anyway.” 

Aiden drags in a shuddering breath, and leans up to kiss him in open desperation. Lambert kisses him back, because Aiden is good at what he does and he’s always hungry for him. Aiden deepens it, lets all the neediness loose, and they’re both panting when they break for air. 

“We’re going to fix it,” Lambert promises, his voice low. “Nothing will be the same after, but we’ll fix it.” 

Aiden looks at him, eyes glittering water-bright, and nods. “I believe you,” he says simply, and Lambert’s heart does something horribly complicated in his chest at that. He drags Aiden back down, and there’s no more words to say after. 

It only takes them two days to find Aiden’s blackmailers, a bandit crew a half day's ride outside of Tretogor. They’re a better equipped lot than most, and their leader wears a battered old crown on his bald head like he thinks himself a proper king. Having met one or two kings, Lambert’s willing to give him the title. Nobility is, at its heart, a shitshow, and rulers only got to be where they are by bullying others with swords a few generations back. 

Aiden just pulls out his steel when he spots them from their place in the woods, does a brief head count, and puts his longsword back in favor of a pair of the Nazairi kukri he’s been favoring. 

“You coming?” he asks absently, checking that his bandolier of blades is where he wants it. 

Lambert shrugs. “If you get overwhelmed, yeah. Have fun.” 

Aiden kisses his cheek, disappearing in a blur. Lambert sits back as a shout of alarm goes up; Aiden’s kukri found the king’s throat first. He’s effective that way.

It’s always a pleasure to watch Aiden at his work. 

Lambert joins the fight only when it looks like Aiden is getting a little bored and wants to finish up. He dispatches the three closest to him with quick, efficient kills, because he’s not that interested in making them suffer for all of their bullshit. They’re terrible, shitty people, but he doesn’t like killing humans. He’s happy to make an exception for Aiden, but only for Aiden. It’s done relatively quick. The group were much better blackmailers than fighters, and Lambert considers the wreckage before going to stand by the group’s wagon. They were poor enough it’s just a hand cart, no horses to be seen. 

Aiden looks at their victims, face unreadable. He bends to scoop the fallen crown from the ground, running his fingers over the cheap metal. Lambert doesn’t rush him. 

“Self righteous bastard,” Aiden says absently, turning it in his hands. “Think I’d look good in a crown?” 

“I think you look good in anything,” Lambert says easily. “Best in nothing at all, in fact.” 

That gets him a quick flash of a smile, and Aiden drops the crown around the hilt of a sword stuck in the dirt with a casual flick of his wrist. He looks around at the carnage and sighs. “What a fucking waste,” he says, mouth twisting. “All this life snuffed out in a heartbeat, just because of stupid human greed and stupid human politics. I never asked for this. I never wanted it. I killed because I was trained for it and my morals and belly aren’t as strong as a wolf’s, but… I don’t know, love. I used to think you wanting to stay out of it was weak, but. Well.” 

He flicks a finger and makes the crown spin on the hilt. 

“Never said neutrality was easy,” Lambert says. He leans against the wagon, watching as Aiden starts going through the pockets of the dead for coin. “Never said I agree with it all the time, either. Geralt can’t stay neutral to save his fucking life, and trying to stay neutral’s what got Eskel’s face fucked up. Just being with you means that I’m walking a thin fucking line of it.” 

Aiden hums, plucking out a rather fat purse to toss to him. “An asshole with morals.” 

“Never claimed anything different,” Lambert agrees easily, and tucks the purse away. “Also not too proud to enjoy your spoils.” 

That gets another little smile from Aiden, and he finishes up his search with another pair of pretty daggers to tuck in among the collection in his sash. “Let’s sit for a while.” 

Lambert shrugs. “Sure.” 

They sit away from the bodies, and Lambert pulls out a rag to clean his sword off as they settle together. Aiden leans his head on Lambert’s shoulder, one arm going to wrap around his waist, and Lambert hums a little as he lets it happen. The birds are singing in the trees as the corpses sit there in quiet repose. Lambert finds it oddly pretty, the juxtaposition of the dead against the pretty little clearing, and then thinks he’s definitely been around Geralt too much over the winter if he’s using words like “juxtaposition.” He leans his head against Aiden’s. Aiden’s eyes are dry, but there’s a bitter tang to the air. Sorrow. 

“We’ll never be able to live like that again, even with them dead,” Aiden says. The bitterness rises. “People will know where to find us. They stole our happy ending.” 

“Nah,” Lambert says, not looking at him as he pulls out his oil. “Fucked up old bastards like us don’t get set in stone happy endings to start with. One part of our lives is done, sure, but it wasn’t everything. We’ll just have to start something new again. Bigger house, maybe… Toussaint. Nice in the summer and the winter. Good monster hunting. Grapes. Wine. You like wine.” 

“You hate the heat, pup,” Aiden says, nuzzling against him. 

“I could learn to love it for you,” Lambert says, a bit too honest. Aiden goes still at his side. Lambert sighs, putting his blade aside and rubbing his forehead. “Look, we have to talk about it. It’s shit, and I _hate_ that we have to, but… I’m not fucking Geralt. I’m fucked up and broken and full of piss and vinegar but we’ve known each other for gods damned decades, Aiden. We’re too old to dance around this. We’re going to have to slow down eventually. Not for a while, I sure fucking hope, but one day. And it might be sooner than later, Aiden. You’re getting worse, and I can’t- it gets harder to leave you every time I have to go.” 

Aiden pulls away, running a hand through his hair and gnawing at his lip as he looks at the corpses. “Fuck.” 

Lambert couldn’t have put it better. He sits quietly with him, as Aiden looks out at nothing and everything, thinking it through. 

Finally, Aiden says, “Toussaint, huh?” 

“Yeah.” Lambert watches him. The sunlight is streaming down through the canopy overhead, and the light of it has lit him beautifully. “Nice on old bones.” 

“On my bones,” Aiden says dryly. “I’m three years older than you, you fucking mother hen.” 

Lambert grins. “Yeah.” He hesitates for a moment before adding, “And… might be nice for visitors.” 

Aiden nods, and looks up at the canopy. “I want to meet them this year. In case I go south fast, I want them to know me like I am now. Maybe your old man might not hate me if he sees I’m not completely mad yet. I kinda want him to like me.” 

A hand constricts hard around Lambert’s heart, but he just says, “Sure, sweetheart. We can do that.” 

Aiden’s smile is a little melancholy. “You’re good to me.” 

“Someone has to be. Might as well be me.” Lambert picks up his sword and sheathes it again, huffing a sigh. “Fuck the Path. We should just settle down and go in a radius for a year. I hate bedbugs in inns.” 

That gets another quicksilver smile out of Aiden, but it fades fast. 

“Since we’re being so candid,” he says quietly, “I guess there’s something else we should talk about too.”

Aiden meets his eyes. Lambert waits. 

“When I go,” he says quietly. “Don’t follow me. Get whatever revenge you want, but don’t you dare follow me through anything but old age or one hell of a battle.” 

The words hit him like a gut punch. “Aiden-” 

Aiden reaches up, cupping his cheek. His eyes search Lambert’s face, as if memorizing him as he stands in this exact moment. Lambert knows he’s trembling, and presses his lips together hard. “I mean it, love. Might never have meant anything more. We both know it’s going to be me who goes first, out of the two of us. It’s a toss up if it’ll be the school, a hunt, my enemies, or the mutagens that get me, but you’re going to outlive me and I need you to make as much peace with that as you can right here, right now. We’ve always known that one of us might not come back after the next time we split apart, but now I- fuck, Lambert, now I _know_ it. I won’t begrudge you your revenge, but I need you to swear to me that you’ll be smart about it. I need you to swear that you’ll not make it a reason to go. I’ve never once asked you to die for me, but I’ll beg you to live for me.” 

“Fuck you,” Lambert says, ragged. The scent of spring blossoms teases his nose, and Aiden’s hair, grown long over the winter, is tugged with the wind. He is so impossibly beautiful, and wonderful, and terrible all at once. Lambert’s known since their first meeting that there will never be anyone else for him. “Fine.” 

Aiden’s free hand finds his. “Swear to me,” he says, soft. His eyes are glowing in the afternoon light, and Lambert wants nothing more than to look at him in the moment forever. “Swear it, Lambert.” 

Lambert tangles their fingers together. The bites on his neck are only a fading bruise, the lacerations from Aiden’s fingernails long gone. One day, his body will be completely free of Aiden’s mark, never to feel it again. He’ll be alone once more, a wolf without a mate, wandering the wilds with no home to go to and food that tastes of ash in his mouth. But Aiden is here, in the now, and the future is as uncertain today as it will be tomorrow. 

“I swear,” he says, hoarse, and Aiden lets out a shaking sigh of relief. 

“Good,” Aiden says, and gently pushes him down into the flowers. Lambert goes easily, hands finding the back of Aiden’s neck as Aiden kisses him with feverish need. 

One day he won’t have this. One day Aiden will be gone for good. 

But that day is not today, and Lambert pulls him down with the promise of summertime wine in his veins and whispers of love, love, love in his mouth, and lets himself break to grow anew.


End file.
